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Helping You Conserve Natural Resources For 35 Years... |
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Upper Republican Natural Resources District |
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Abandoned wells may provide a direct link for contamination from surface water to groundwater. Agricultural and yard and lawn care chemicals, livestock waste, and other contaminants can filter through an abandoned well and contaminate groundwater supplies. Abandoned wells can be physically hazardous. If a well is not properly sealed, small animals and even children can be at risk of falling into the well. Abandoned wells could have a tendency to come back and haunt your groundwater supply. An abandoned well is a well that has not been properly decommissioned. "Decommissioning" means the act of filling, sealing and plugging a water well in accordance with the Rules and Regulations of the Nebraska Health and Human Services. Please contact the NRD office in Imperial about this Decommissioning Program. |
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Measurements and tables needed to calculate water usage. |
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Nitrate (NO3) is the primary source of nitrogen (N) for plants; it is a nutrient they cannot live without. Nitrate contamination of a water supply occurs when there is more nitrate in the soil than plants can use and when water can move easily through the soil and underlying rock. The excess nitrate is carried through the soil into groundwater supplies by irrigation water, rainwater, and snowmelt. This is most likely to occur when the soil is sandy, or gravelly and/or shallow water tables exist. Excess nitrate can accumulate in the soil from several sources, including fertilizer, manure, and sewage. The URNRD provides services to farmers to test their household water supply for nitrates and coliform bacteria on a summer/winter basis. Our sampling strategy is to collect well water on a stratified, random selection process, where we select wells within a 3-mile radius of our trigger well - which usually targets greater than 4ppm in a given area. We then sample other domestic wells within that circle for a consistency to explore and find any point-sources of possible contamination. We will use this data as a representative sample of that designated circle-area from a certain county in our district. We also consider if the domestic well was previously, actively being used as a household drinking water supply, and if there were any elderly or children under the age of three consuming it. The NRD has a total of 210 water wells that are sampled on a yearly basis, which includes both domestic and irrigated wells. For a typical year, 60 domestic wells are sampled in the winter and 150 domestic/irrigation wells in the summer months. The results have shown to vary based on the water usages from season to season, which can affect both the nitrate and bacteria count - and we test these to see if they are consistent year after year. While in the field, we also check for well integrity, potential point sources of contamination (such as septic tanks, feedlots, municipal dumps, and industrial incidents) are identified; and prevalent land use within a 1-mile radius of the sample location are noted. Our samples are collected using two 100mL plastic bottles (one used for nitrates, and the other for coliform bacteria) for later analyses. By using a pocket HACH Colorimeter, we can see if it flags greater than 4ppm, and if it does, we send it to the Olsen's lab in McCook. We use this technique to compare the accuracy of our equipment, and to see if there is a need to send it to the lab for a further, more complete analyst. In about a week or two, they will send us the results in a printout form, and we will mail these to the individual homeowner or producer whom we collected the sample from. We use this same sampling procedure with the irrigation wells in the district. For further information regarding nitrate safety in drinking water and other sampling procedures, please refer to the following website: http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/. |
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Nebraska has a proud history of planting trees on the prairie. Arbor Day, an international holiday, was born here. Nebraska was a national leader in planting trees during the dust bowl Era of the 1930's. NRDs help landowners plant more than a million trees each year in Nebraska. Trees and shrubs benefit both people and animals. They shade and shelter homes, reduce soil erosion, protect crops and livestock, provide homes for wildlife, control noise, provide us with food and lumber and add beauty to our landscape. The URNRD sells trees for conservation use. The District also plants trees and shrubs for landowners and installs weed barrier/mulch to help in controlling weeds that compete for water. The URNRD will share the cost with the landowner as funds are available. |
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Abandoned Water Wells |
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Nitrates In Household Water |
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Conversion Tables |
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Trees |
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Services |
